Walter Jurmann (1903-1971)

Biographical Summary by Rudolf Ulrich

from his book Österreicher in Hollywood, used by permission
English translation by Hyde Flippo

WALTER JURMANN | Composer
12 October 1903, Vienna, Austria - 17 June 1971, Budapest, Hungary

“San Francisco, Open Your Golden Gate”

	Walter Jurmann in a studio portrait.

The second son of an entrepreneurial family was actually supposed to become a physician. Walter Jurmann’s solid middle-class background made it possible for him to obtain a comprehensive liberal arts education which also included music studies. After getting his Matura (high school diploma) in 1921, he took up medical studies at the University of Vienna, satisfying his parents’ wishes. Three years later his musical career began rather by accident as a pianist in the piano bar of the elegant Hotel Panhans at the Semmering mountain resort area south of Vienna.

The lyricist Fritz Rotter convinced Jurmann to team up with him and move to Berlin. In the German capital the two men from Vienna created numerous popular hit tunes, including “Ninon,” “Schade, dass Liebe ein Märchen ist” (“Too bad that love is a myth”), or “Veronika, der Lenz ist da” (“Veronika, spring is here”), which the famous German a cappella sextett, the Comedian Harmonists, always used as the opening number for their concerts. Many of the Jurmann/Rotter songs became standards associated with well-known German artists such as Richard Tauber, Greta Keller, or Jan Kiepura, and the tunes gained popularity through the new media of records and sound movies. Towards the end of 1931 Rotter added the Warsaw composer Bronislaw Kaper to the team, and Kaper became the arranger for Jurmann’s melodies and music. But when the Nazis came to power, all three left Germany. While Rotter returned to Vienna, Jurmann went to Paris, where he worked on cabaret revues under the pseudonym of Pierre Candel and did some film work with Kaper.

In the summer of 1934 Louis B. Mayer was once again in Europe on a talent hunt. In the studios of California, film people from “good old Europe” were in demand, and music ranked very high on the list of the producer’s needs. Mayer signed the Jurmann/Kaper duo to a seven-year contract with MGM. A short time later the Hollywood Reporter announced the triumphal West Coast arrival of “Vienna’s most brilliant musical composing team.”

In February 1935 work began at the studio. Jurmann’s first assignment, Escapade, was based on the 1934 Austrian Willi Forst comedy Maskerade. The success curve began with the Italian influenced scherzo “Cosi Cosa” for the Marx Brothers’ first MGM film, A Night at the Opera. The marvelous title song for the film San Francisco (1936), sung by Jeanette MacDonald in three different musical syles and rhythms, was turned into the embodiment of the heartbeat of an up-and-coming American city through the film’s plot, and soon became a Jurmann hallmark. “San Francisco (Open Your Golden Gate)” is still the most famous work by the composer. Over the years there would be over 100 recordings of the song, it would be reused in several more pictures, and Judy Garland turned it into an all-time cult standard during her legendary 1961 concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Jurmann quickly expanded the breadth of his work. The songs “My Heart is Singing” and “Someone to Care for Me” helped provide a spectacular film debut for the 16-year-old Deanne Durbin in Three Smart Girls, a B-picture by Universal (MGM had lent out the musical team). Just how well the Viennese composer could meet the musical tastes of his host country was indicated by audience reaction to the swing number “All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm” in another Marx Brothers film, A Day at the Races. Created for the female, black singer Ivie Anderson, the song combined jazz and spiritual elements, and was later recorded by Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, and Jimmy Dorsey.

	In July 2005 the city of Berlin honored Walter Jurmann with a memorial plaque in his former residence. Pictured (l-r): Berlin official André Schmitz, Yvonne Jurmann, singer and orchestra leader Max Rabe, and the Austrian ambassador to Germany, Dr. Christian Prosl. Photo courtesy Rudolf Ulrich

As the 1930s came to an end, hit tunes were no longer the most important aspect of film music. Now a dramatic plot with corresponding background music was key. The well-known film scores by other Austrians in Hollywood—Max Steiner or Erich Wolfgang Korngold—were now in fashion. After 1938 Jurmann went into temporary retirement. It was not until 1941 that the producer Joe Pasternak was able to lure him back to the studios. Jurmann, now working alone as a freelance composer, wrote tunes for Katherine Grayson and Martha Eggert in connection with several Pasternak musicals, including Seven Sweethearts, Presenting Lily Mars, and the extravagant Thousands Cheer (1943), with which MGM wanted to prove the truth of its motto “more stars than there are in heaven.” After that, the musical citizen of the world, who had worked for 15 years in the three biggest film centers on over 50 films, and had composed over 100 songs, said his final good-bye to the cinema world.

At Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third inauguration in 1940 Deanne Durbin sang Jurmann’s hymn “Thank You, America” from the Universal comedy Nice Girl?. For Jimmy Carter’s 1977 inauguration, the official state of Texas contribution was the anthem “San Antonio,” composed by Jurmann in 1967. After a vote in May 1984, the song “San Francisco” was proclaimed the official song of “the city by the bay.”

Outside of his field, the composer tried his luck as a producer in 1950 with the adventure film Kill or Be Killed (directed by Max Nosseck). Walter Jurmann, a creative composer engaged in the quest for musical perfection and melodious hits, died in Hungary during a visit to Europe. The prince of light entertainment lies in rest at the Hollywood Forever cemetery in Los Angeles. In 1995 Jurmann’s widow, Yvonne, published a Catalogue of Works that documented in a comprehensive way her husband’s life and works.

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